


i love you

by lionofsounis



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien is my sunshine boy, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, How Do I Tag, i wrote this and im dead now, post-reveal, seriously i stayed up til 4 last night, well maybe more than a dash, with a dash of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 09:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9228239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionofsounis/pseuds/lionofsounis
Summary: I love youphrase[ahy] [luhv] [yoo]The famous sentiment.Also known as:those three little words. The stringing together of I and love and you, specifically in that order, applied to a person you couldn't live without when you needed them toknowthat you couldn't live without them.Adrien hasn't said those words in years. Every time he says them, he loses someone. So he stops. Until he meets an ancient, magical creature with strange powers, an ordinary teenage boy, andher.





	

**Author's Note:**

> idk i get emotional about adrien bc he's a sunshine??? also he’s super #relatable to me and that is why i have no sympathy for gabriel when ppl be like ‘he loves adrien in his own way’ listen his own way is bullshit and im ready to fight abt it bc i been in that shit and its called shit for a reason
> 
> i wrote this and it killed me stone dead. like i stayed up til 4am finishing it. i dont fricken know im dead inside
> 
> tl;dr just let adrien love people

Adrien hadn't said it in years.

 

That oh-so-famous sentiment, those three little words, the stringing together of I and love and you, specifically in that order, applied to a person you couldn't live without when you needed them to _know_ that you couldn't live without them.

 

The last time he'd said it had been to his dad, shortly after his mom disappeared. He'd said it to her, too, the night before, and in the morning he woke and found her gone and she hadn't been back since.

 

He knew, of course, that her being gone had nothing to do with those words, the words I and love and you, strung together specifically in that order. He knew that sometimes these things happened no matter how much you loved someone, because even though the movies acted like love could fix anything, or _do_ anything, the truth was that it couldn't. Love couldn't bring your mom back, and it couldn't fix the strange emptiness in your father's eyes or in the space between the two of you. It couldn't soften the icy tone of his voice, even when he hugged you to tell you he was glad you were alright. It _could_ make your house feel warm, or so Adrien had heard, but he supposed that didn’t really apply when you were the only one _in_ your house.

 

It was unreasonable to think, of course, that the words I and love and you, strung together specifically in that order, was what _made_ his mother go away. It had nothing to do with _him_ , the fact that one day she was there and then the next she wasn't.

 

That's what he told himself, anyway.

 

But it was a strange coincidence that everyone he said those three words to was gone. He'd said it to his grandparents, eons ago when he was too small to understand that you _could,_ in fact, live without certain people, and they were gone; dead for years now.

 

He'd said it to his mom, and she was gone. Well, missing. That's what people said. ‘She might not be dead,’ they said. ‘She’s _missing.’_ ‘She _disappeared.’_ As if that was supposed to mean something other than gone. And when it was late and dark and the house was deathly quiet because there was no one there but himself, Adrien’s brain repeated the agonizing question over and over:

 

What was the difference between ‘missing’ and dead, if they both meant _gone?_

 

He'd said it to his father, too, and he was -- well, technically he wasn't gone. But he wasn't exactly _not_ gone either. He was there -- physically, anyway -- and there was nothing stopping Adrien from telling him he loved him again, or from crushing him in a bear hug, or even from just reaching out to touch him. There was nothing stopping him. Nothing except past experience.

 

Adrien had stopped saying it to his father eventually. He realized one day that Gabriel never said it back, and what was the point of loving someone who could never love you back? His father loved him, of course -- well, Adrien put the ‘of course’ there himself, out of habit. When he was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure if his father _did_ love him. He was sure his father _thought_ he loved him, in his own way, but what did love mean if there was no proof of it? Adrien had always heard that actions spoke louder than words, and sometimes (most times), he didn’t feel like his father’s actions were saying ‘I love you’.

 

He’d also heard it said that to love someone you had to let them go. He wondered what his father thought of that pithy little maxim.

 

He probably hated it.

 

It went against everything he stood for. Everything he did, every aspect of his parenting style, every aspect of him as a person.

 

Oh sure, he left Adrien alone a lot of the time. He kept his distance. But that was the problem. He left him _alone_. Except, of course, when Adrien wanted to do normal things like go to school and have friends. Gabriel made it out to be a kind of protectiveness, and Adrien supposed it was, but it always felt more like possessiveness, and Adrien just couldn’t find a way to be at peace with that. He was a person, after all, not a thing to be owned or shown off or kept in a safe because it was too precious for the world to see.

 

And that was the crux of the whole thing. Because Adrien was bursting with love. He could feel it, pumping through his heart -- he had love in his veins, not blood -- warming him up, keeping him alive and smiling and breathing and whatever else. He had love for every person in the world and then some. His love could power the sun and the moon and all the stars.

 

But he was so alone.

 

It reminded him, strangely, of that old saying. The old question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. His love was the unstoppable force, but his life was the immovable object.

 

He had enough love to power the sun if that was how the universe worked (he knew it wasn’t but that was besides the point) and yet he had no one to give it to. The people he had tried to give it to were gone. Almost like he loved too much. Like he burned so bright that they had to get away from it. Away from him.

 

And so he stopped saying ‘I love you’ to his father. Because with each of those three words, each time he strung them together, his father seemed to get farther and farther away.

 

And what was the point of loving someone who could never love you back?

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t that he stopped loving, he just stopped saying it. Not just to his father, but to everyone. What was the point of telling someone you couldn’t live without them, when you knew very well that you could?

 

He told himself it was for their own good. He was protecting them. Every time he told someone he loved them, something bad happened to them. He was just keeping them safe.

 

(Sometimes, when it was late and dark and the house was deathly quiet because there was no one there but himself, the treacherous part of his brain would whisper that he was just scared. He was a great, big coward and he was scared to lose anyone else, and if he didn’t love anyone, he wouldn’t have to hurt when they left. This was true and untrue, and that was the worst of it. Great big coward? True. Scared to lose people? True. But he knew that pretending not to love was not the same as _actually_ not loving, and he loved anyway. In spite of everything and everyone that had ever hurt him, he loved. He wouldn’t have to hurt when someone left? Untrue. Regardless of whether he’d said ‘I love you’ or not. _Untrue_.)  
  


Part of him wanted to be able to stop loving, wanted to turn off the sensation of just… _feeling_ so much all the time. It hurt to feel so much. It hurt to love so much and have nowhere to put it.

 

But he also wanted the opposite. He _wanted_ to love so much that people were in awe of him. He wanted to have friends and partnerships and love returned someday. Because as much as it hurt to love, it also made him feel more alive than anything else ever had.

 

* * *

 

The day he meets Plagg changes everything for him. It’s the first time he thinks about those three little words in a long time.

 

Oh, he doesn’t _love_ Plagg immediately. Plagg is the embodiment of the friend who ‘takes some getting used to’. Plagg is obnoxious and shameless and blunt and _always_ smells of camembert. But he gives Adrien something that Adrien hasn’t had in a long time. He gets him out of the house, for one thing, but more importantly, he gives Adrien something to lavish some of his love on. As Chat Noir, Adrien's got the whole of Paris to love.

 

Adrien doesn’t consciously think of saying those three little words to Plagg when they meet. In fact, he doesn’t think of it until much later on in their relationship. But the words are there, in the back of his mind, like a stone inscription, buried for centuries, waiting for the wind and the rain and the sun to work at the dirt, day after day, storm after storm, until it’s readable again. And when Adrien realizes it, when he realizes he loves Plagg -- tactless, ridiculous, impossible Plagg -- he also realizes that he knows Plagg loves him back.

 

Plagg hasn’t said it either, naturally, because Plagg is Plagg, and Plagg eats camembert and does _not_ talk about his feelings. But Adrien knows anyway.

 

He knows because Plagg believes in him. Because Plagg’s believed in him since the beginning. When Adrien’s father was full of ‘you-can’t’s, Plagg gave him a ‘you _can_.’ There wasn’t some big, epic character moment with a moving speech -- they had just met, after all. No, Plagg came in with no knowledge of who Adrien was, took one look at him, and said, ‘you can do this, kid.’

 

And Adrien believed him.

 

That’s what makes Adrien love Plagg, just the simple fact that he believes in people, even ones he’s just met. And he keeps believing in them; he keeps believing in Adrien, even when he screws up, even when he’s given him so many reasons to walk away, he stays.

 

He _stays_.

 

And that’s how Adrien knows that Plagg loves him, too.

 

* * *

 

He thinks of the words again when he meets Nino.

 

Nino’s ridiculous too, though in a different way than Plagg. He wears a graphic tee every single day, and never takes off his baseball cap. He thinks wearing headphones around your neck is a fashion statement, and every sentence out of his mouth starts with _‘dude’_. He calls Adrien ‘bro’, wants to be a DJ, and likes rebelling against authority. He’s every single teenage boy stereotype rolled up into one person.

 

Adrien doesn’t really know what to do with Nino immediately, either. For all the love and sunshine coursing through him, Adrien is _really_ bad at first impressions. But somehow, the two of them hit it off.

 

He doesn’t say ‘I love you’ to Nino. And Nino doesn’t say it to him. But Adrien knows anyway.

 

He knows because Nino plans a birthday party for him -- Gabriel’s wishes be damned -- just because he wants to see his friend happy. He confronts Adrien’s father (even Adrien isn’t that brave, most of the time) just because he wants to see his friend happy.

 

And if Nino believes that Adrien deserves to be happy, then Adrien believes it, too.

 

That’s what makes Adrien love Nino. Just the simple fact that he genuinely wants to see people happy. He seems to take Adrien’s happiness on as his personal mission.

 

It’s been a long time since anyone’s done that for Adrien.

 

Most importantly, Nino doesn’t give up. Sure, he quavers when Gabriel’s towering in front of him, and he says he doesn’t want to have to go through _that_ ever again. But Adrien gets the feeling he would, if the need arose.

 

He would do it all again. Just to see Adrien happy.

 

And that’s how Adrien knows that Nino loves him, too.

 

* * *

 

And then there’s _her_.

 

At first, he separates them in his mind: Ladybug and Marinette. But nothing lasts forever, especially secrets, and eventually Adrien learns the truth: that his crime-fighting partner is the same blushing, stuttering, head-to-toe-pink-wearing, aspiring fashion designer that sits behind him in class.

 

It’s like everything in his life makes sense all of a sudden. (It doesn’t, of course, because Marinette being Ladybug doesn’t explain his mom being gone or his father's behaviour or any number of other things, but something about Marinette makes him feel at peace with all that other… _stuff)._ It’s like his life is a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and he’s only on piece one hundred thirty-two, but it’s the one piece that’s going to tie everything together, the one piece that he’s been looking for all along, the one that’s going to make the rest of the puzzle so much easier.

 

In some ways, he doesn’t think she understands. She’s got the kind of parents he’s always wished for: supportive, openly affectionate, balanced, _present_. As in, they’re just… _there_.

 

They take him in like he’s their own son, and between them and Marinette, he’s never felt so loved in his life. All through high school, he’s a welcome guest at the bakery, even when he knows Marinette isn’t there. Sabine feeds him cookies and croissants and macarons and anything else that might happen to be on its way out of the oven. Tom beats him at video games (sometimes) and they commiserate over the fact that Marinette can still run circles around them both.

 

He can tell Marinette’s a little confused, the first time she comes home to find him hanging out in the kitchen with her parents, _without_ her. Like I said, he’s not sure she gets it. But she smiles a little, and blushes a little, and joins them to make supper, admonishing him lovingly for slicing the vegetables wrong, which only encourages him to continue cutting them wrong.

 

She’s exasperated. He’s practically giddy. Her parents share knowing looks over the teenagers’ heads.

 

It doesn’t take long before he realizes he doesn’t feel like a guest at all. Marinette’s house is more home than his father’s house has ever been.

 

He doesn’t tell her he loves her. Doesn’t tell her he’s been in love with her since the day they met. Doesn’t tell her that he’d watched her leave with an expression of ridiculous awe on his face. Doesn’t tell her that he said, “I love that girl” out loud for anyone to hear, without caring who _did_ hear.

 

At least, not right away.

 

He could have, though. He could have said it right away.

 

_I love you._

 

That oh-so-famous sentiment, those three little words, the stringing together of I and love and you, specifically in that order, applied to a person you couldn't live without when you needed them to _know_ that you couldn't live without them.

 

_I love you._

 

The shortness of their acquaintance wouldn’t have made the sentiment any less true, just as the length of their acquaintance won’t change a thing. He just loves her, and he knows he always will. That’s all. That’s everything.

 

He loves her when he says something sappy and she blushes and stammers and fumbles for a response. He loves her because that never entirely goes away, even after years together. She doesn’t back away when he burns bright. Instead, she’s always a little surprised. Surprised that with all the love he has to give, he chooses to give the best of it to her.

 

(She’s wrong in that, of course; Adrien doesn’t _choose_ to love her, he just loves her. He can’t help it.)

 

He loves her when he smirks and she sees it and groans in advance because he’s _going_ to say something stupid and it’s _going_ to be a terrible cat pun and she’s _going_ to ask him why he has to be like this and why she puts up with it and he’s going to grin and say _you secretly love it_. She’s going to say _no, you’re the worst_ but there’s also going to be a smile tugging at the corner of her lips and he’s going to see it and that’s going to make his insides feel all warm and fuzzy because he made her laugh even though she won’t admit it and and his heart’s going to thump a little faster and…

 

Well. He loves her.

 

He loves her when they’re baking or cooking (usually baking, if they’re honest. He wonders sometimes what they’ll look like when they get old and stop working out and their metabolism catches up with them). When she has flour on her nose and her handmade pink (of course) apron on. When she scolds him for being slapdash and not measuring ingredients or for spilling oats all over the floor or exploding flour everywhere. Like. _Every_ where. _That only happened once!_ he’ll exclaim, and she’ll give him her most unimpressed face, and then he’ll drop an egg or something on the floor, just because the universe loves proving him wrong, and she’ll cock an eyebrow and one corner of her lips will quirk up. He’ll dive in to kiss that corner of her mouth, because there’s something elusive about it, like there’s a special kind of kiss _right there_ , just for a split second and he wants to snatch it, to taste it, before it disappears. It’s like a challenge, a puzzle box, where no matter many you boxes you discover, there is always one more to be opened. There's always one more kiss to be had and he’s always trying to get it.

 

He’s gone. He’s completely screwed. He has no idea what he’d do if he wasn’t always chasing that kiss.

 

Oh _gosh_ , he loves her.

 

He realizes he loves her in a pretty inconvenient moment, honestly. They’ve just defeated a supervillain (Hawkmoth, who just so happens to also be his _dad)_ and they’re both in a sort of dazed, disbelieving state. Their miraculouses have run out, and it’s the first time he’s seen Marinette as Ladybug. It’s the first time she’s seen Adrien as Chat Noir. Tears are pricking his eyes, he’s just had to heave not one but two giant roof beams off his own leg, and he’s sweatier than he’s ever been in his life. She’s coughing, her throat rough and sore from Hawkmoth’s -- his dad’s -- chokehold, and a good portion of her outfit has been torn to shreds. In his emotionally distressed, pain-addled state, he’s irrationally sorry for her pink jeans getting ruined. He’s more sorry for the bloody scrapes underneath them, and for the dark bruises already forming in patches on her shins and forearms, but for some reason the pink pants strike him as a great tragedy.

 

They have to improvise a little to get out without revealing their identities to the press or the police, and through a series of misadventures, they end up on the roof. He realizes he loves her when he holds his hand out to return the earrings his father had stolen from her, but she just stares at them blankly for a moment before bypassing his hand altogether. It’s not a conscious thought, the _I love you_ that he sends her way, but he realizes it all the same. Her arms are around him, one hand stroking his hair while the other latches onto his shoulder like a vice. He loves her when she holds him so tightly he can barely breathe, when he finally feels safe enough to cry, because she _knows_. She knows him, and as much as she’ll spend the next months and years -- and the rest of their lives, really -- saying she doesn’t know how he gets through it or how much it must hurt, he really thinks she _does_ know. She understands.

 

And he loves her for it.

 

Looking back on everything they’ve been through, he realizes that he loves her because she’s _safe_. She’s safe to cry on, safe to hurt to, safe to kiss. It’s safe to make a mess, it’s safe to make her laugh. He’s safe to profess all the most ridiculous and overwrought stirrings of his messy, wounded, love-deprived but filled-to-bursting heart and he knows she’ll stay anyway. He knows she’ll do her damnedest to make him happy.

 

He’s not sure she knows that what makes him happiest is just to be able to love someone, _finally._

 

* * *

 

 

He tells her eventually, of course.

 

He utters those three little words, strings together I and love and you, specifically in that order, and gives them to the person who’s saved his life in so many ways.

 

The moment he realized he loved her was a mess, so he’d always sort of planned to save the real, out-loud declaration of it for a truly perfect moment.

 

But he’s starting to realize there’s no such thing as perfect moments. Or maybe there is, but they’re a lot smaller and simpler than he originally imagined.

 

_“I love you.”_

 

Marinette looks up from her notebook. She’s been hunched over it for hours, frowning and sighing and erasing and redrawing. She’s working on an important design: her best friend is getting an important journalism award at an important ceremony thing and she’s been agonizing over how the dress has to be perfect. She stops to wring her hand every few minutes because she’s gripping the pencil so tightly. He's surprised the pencil's still in one piece.

 

She also sticks her tongue out a little when she works, and Adrien thinks it’s adorable.

 

He loves her so much.

 

For his part, he’s been doing mostly nothing while she works. He tosses snacks to their kwamis in between staring at Marinette, and occasionally traces his finger softly along her leg.

 

Maybe it wasn’t the kind of perfect you’d find at the end of a romance movie, but something about it makes Adrien sure he’ll remember it for the rest of his life. He makes a mental note of everything, filing it away with the three words that spring to mind as he looks at Marinette. He catalogues the scent of croissants wafting up through the floorboards, the distant sounds of traffic and people outside, the dust motes sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, the particular comfort of being sprawled on the floor together, the smooth, warm feel of her skin at his fingertips.

 

He loves her.

 

And he says so.

 

_“I love you.”_

 

When she looks up, it’s with some confusion. She’s been snapped out of her hard work, in an utterly simple and unremarkable moment, to be given the most remarkable thing Adrien Agreste has to offer.

 

He hasn’t said those words in years.

 

Those famous, _famous_ words. Those three tiny little words, a grand total of just eight letters, the garland strung together of I and love and you, specifically in that order, applied to the person you couldn't live without when you needed them to _know_ that you couldn't live without them.

 

“What?”

 

“I love you,” he says again, and then he grins because she’s doing the _thing_. The thing where she stares at him like she doesn’t know what she did to deserve him. Her lips part slightly in surprise and then comes the bit where she gets all stammery and turns pink and fumbles for a response.

 

“Now?” she asks. _“Now?_ We're not even -- There's nothing important about -- I'm freaking out about Alya’s dress right now and you decide to say _that?”_

 

He laughs. “Why not now?”

 

She huffs a little, though not angrily.

 

He props himself up on his elbows, giving her his most charming (he thinks) smile. She huffs again, her blush flaring to an even deeper red. He laughs at that and she looks decidedly away from him.

 

He sits up with a grunt and before she can say anything, his lips are on hers, soft and tender and lingering. She sighs gently into him, and they stay pressed together for a long moment.

 

Her cheeks are still flushed when they part, though it’s starting to fade. Adrien’s pretty sure he has the world’s dopiest smile on his face, because Marinette ducks her head, her lips twitching. She looks up at him through her lashes and it occurs to him that his favourite colour is the particular shade of blue that he sees in her eyes.

 

“What’s up with you today, _mon chaton?”_ She says, with a gentle tap on his nose.

 

He shrugs a little, pulling her closer. “I just thought it was time I told you.” He brushes aside a lock of blue-black hair and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I love you.” He kisses her nose and she giggles. “So much.” He draws her hand to his lips and kisses it, brushing his thumb over her knuckles as he does.

 

He’s said it three times now. Three times in the space of a minute. He thinks if he keeps going at that rate, he might just make up for years of not saying it.

 

Part of him is waiting. Waiting for the rejection, for the _gone_ that always follows the _I love you_ , and he’s said it three times, so he feels like he’s triple dog daring the universe to just _try_ and take Marinette away from him. He doesn’t care, somehow. Let his bad luck come for her, she had enough good luck to counteract it. And anyway, how much bad luck could he have, if she was here with him right now? The universe could try. It could try and pull them apart, but it didn't matter: he'd fight the whole universe if he had to.

 

But he knows he won’t have to. The doubtful part of him is so much smaller than it used to be.

 

And he knows.

 

He knows before she says it.

 

He loves her.

 

And she --

 

“I love you too,” she says, and this time she kisses him.

 


End file.
